1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to liquid crystal displays and, in particular, to a liquid crystal display in which pixel electrodes and a common electrode are provided for the same substrate and at least one of the electrodes has slits.
2. Related Art
In fringe field switching (FFS) mode liquid crystal displays, both of pixel electrodes and a common electrode that control the orientation of the liquid crystal are provided for the same substrate. The two electrodes are stacked with an insulating layer therebetween. The upper electrode of these electrodes, that is, the electrode adjacent to the liquid crystal layer has slits. The upper electrode is rubbed substantially in parallel to the length (the long side) of the slits. When the voltage between the electrodes is an OFF-state voltage, the liquid crystal molecules are oriented substantially in parallel to the length of the slits. When a voltage higher than the OFF-state voltage is applied to between the electrodes, an electric field is generated in the direction perpendicular to the long side of the slits, so that the liquid crystal molecules are rotated along the direction of the electric field in the plane substantially parallel to the substrate. The amount of light to be transmitted can be controlled by controlling the rotation angle of the liquid crystal molecules. The pixel electrodes and the common electrode are stacked with an insulating layer therebetween to form a hold capacitor. An example is disclosed in JP-A-2003-140188.
If strong extraneous light enters an FFS mode liquid crystal display, a rainbow-colored stripe pattern sometimes appears. This may be caused by the fact that the extraneous light is reflected in the liquid crystal display and the reflected light interferes with one another because of the regular arrangement of the slits. The stripe pattern can be generated not only when no image is displayed but also when an image is displayed.